One of the most appealing aspects of medical transcription is that it offers multiple career options. Once trained and certified you can pursue the traditional job route and work for an established company or you can go the entrepreneurial route and set up a home office. Even the home office requirements are pretty basic which makes it a fairly simple and straightforward process to set up and get started.

Like all fields, technology is becoming an ever increasing aspect of medical transcription but an internet connection and computer remain the cornerstones of any medical transcriptionist. However, more and more, products are becoming available that will assist you in increasing your productivity and your accuracy.

For those of you relatively new to the field of medical transcription, you make still have the idea that a medical transcriptionist simply writes down or transcribes whatever a doctor has dictated onto a tape recorder. To a degree, that's still true today but digital recordings have made a big difference in the sound quality and overall poor quality, scratchy tapes are becoming less and less common.

Technology associated with medical transcription is also making it much easier for health care professionals to provide their dictated messages to you - the medical transcriptionist. No longer do you have to have the recorded message in your hand. It's now possible to receive your recordings via the telephone. You simply have to set up a recording device specifically designed for medical transcription on your home phone and then have your clients' phone in their dictations.

Once your client has dictated their message onto your phone system, you now have the option of either transcribing it directory from the recorder or it can be routed to your computer's dictation software and you can transcribe it from there. Another nice aspect of these systems is that they are flexible and easy to use for both you and your clients. For example: Many recorders come with easy to use controls that allow you to pause, stop and start, even fast forward or replay segments of the recordings using your feet and some even have voice activated controls. These are great features because they keep your hands free which allows you to transcribe and control the recordings at the same time.

Although medical transcription is an emerging career field with great potential it's also a demanding profession with tight deadlines and little or no room for error. However, with the vast array of currently available training and technology if you have what it takes, it does offer unlimited potential. It's also one of the few professions today that offers real job security because if you can handle the deadlines and produce accurate transcriptions on time, you should never have to worry about losing your job.

On the other hand, if you are simply looking for a part-time income while raising your children, by working a few hours a day, it may simply be an effort in futility because of the deadlines and the demands required from a medical transcriptionist. You'll have to be the judge of that.